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About Linde B. Lehtinen

Linde B. Lehtinen is Assistant Curator at the Skirball with special interests in art history and photography. She previously worked for the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute on acquisitions and exhibitions. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Linde loves trying new restaurants around town, baking pies from scratch and flipping through 1930s magazines for the ads.

The Skirball exhibition Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950, now on view through March 1, explores how European exiles and émigrés helped create some of the most classic Hollywood films during and immediately after World War II. Film noir is one of the genres from that era that was heavily shaped by these film artists. Noir films present thrilling stories involving intrigue, suspense, disillusionment, and corruption. Characters are often immersed in dark worlds full of tension and uncertainty. As a companion to Light & Noir, the exhibition The Noir Effect looks at a range of contemporary fine art, film, graphic novels, and games that have taken noir in a new direction and redefined it for audiences today. A large section of the exhibition includes contemporary photography by a diverse group of artists who embrace and experiment with the aesthetics of film noir.

Among these artists is the Los Angeles–based photography duo ROUSE & JONES. Partners in life as well as art, writer/director Mitchell Rouse and photographer/producer Brittany Jones began collaborating in 2009, and soon developed a photography series called NOIR based on their love of films from Hollywood’s Golden Age. The pair’s work combines several elements of film, photography, performance, and storytelling.

Rather than re-creating films that already exist, ROUSE & JONES create a new story in the film noir style using a distinct sequence of techniques. First, they write an original, noir-inspired script that includes setting, action, and dialogue. Then, they ask actors to perform the story, directing the actors’ lines and gestures as they photograph the unfolding scene. Several “takes” of each scene are photographed, shot from different angles and using multiple lighting setups. The actors are encouraged to improvise so that the tension and realism of each scene are heightened.

ROUSE & JONES believe in nurturing the noir genre for future generations; on February 26, as part of the “Light & Noir in Los Angeles” high school residency at the Skirball, the pair will meet with students to discuss their work and share techniques. But before they do, I thought I’d check in with them on SkirBlog and see if they could provide a few more insights into their fascinating way of working:

What is it about film noir that you are so drawn to? Why do you think this type of work that draws from noir themes is still so relevant and compelling today?We love film noir because it’s all about “painting with light,” as the great noir cinematographer John Alton would say. Obviously that’s true of every image ever created, but the noir aesthetic is probably the most dramatic example of how light can be used to tell stories and create emotions. Light and shadow are always “characters” in noir imagery.

Noir themes are still relevant today because they are universal. Noir explores the dark side of man (and world), and those are things that every person faces in their lives. There’s an interesting balance between light and dark within every person, Continue reading →

For many filmmakers, writers, and artists, Los Angeles is the quintessential noir setting. As part of The Noir Effect exhibition, we challenged people to use the noir city as inspiration and submit their own noir-style photographs for a “Shoot Your L.A. Noirscape” contest.

We received more than eighty entries that captured all corners of Los Angeles, from famous landmarks to dramatic shadow-filled streets to moody urban landscapes. People experimented with angles, light sources, blur effects, shadows, colors, and filters. Some even incorporated noir characters into mysterious urban scenes to trigger unsettling narratives. The eclectic range of submissions reinforced just how much noir is part of today’s culture and is constantly being redefined. Noir extends beyond the film genre and becomes a lens for seeing the world. It’s a language, an art form, a style and sensibility that can be applied to so many spaces and environments.

We handed over nineteen compelling entries from our finalists (you can see them all in the slideshow below) to Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation and producer and host of the NOIR CITY film festival, who made the final selection. And we are pleased to announce that the winner is…Eric Canale! Eric wins a nice dinner at the old Hollywood restaurant Musso & Frank Grill, and his photograph will be displayed in The Noir Effect gallery for the month of February, so be sure to look for it!

The Santa Monica Pier is my favorite location to shoot, especially at night and in the fog. It was a very creepy place when I first moved to Santa Monica in the early 1980s. Back then, soon after sunset, the area would turn into a real Night of the Living Dead. The tourists would flee and some of the shady characters who populated Palisades Park would rise and approach anyone around. Things started to change in 1989, when Cirque du Soleil began to set up at the pier and attract people with money. The addition of a police station, new restaurants, and the redesign of Pacific Park made it a tourist mecca. Now the pier is as packed at night as it is during the day, and no one feels threatened (unless you find people dressed as cartoon characters scary).

How do we express love? What does it take to have a lasting relationship, friendship, or marriage? What did your parents or grandparents teach you about unconditional love? These were just some of the questions posed to the public by Los Angeles art collaborative Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young) as they explored the meanings of love and commitment for Fallen Fruit of the Skirball, a multi-phase exhibition on view through October 12 at the Skirball. Sorting through hundreds of responses, Fallen Fruit realized that three different voices emerged—representing wisdom, reason, and guidance on everyday actions. The artists then carefully selected and organized these key words and phrases (using three distinct font styles) to create a commitment document called Love Score. The document is a contemporary take on the ketubbah, a traditional Jewish marriage contract. Densely designed in a style reminiscent of visual poetry, the Love Score provides a unique set of instructions on how to love someone.

Fallen Fruit, Love Score, 2014. Co-authored with the public, this dense text piece takes a few minutes to “decode,” but eventually the words form a harmonious statement about how to love others.

Now on view in Fallen Fruit of the Skirball: a selection of portraits of people who love each other, all submitted by the public. In making the selection, the artists looked for candid moments that were personal but also spoke to the broader public—smiles, hugs, hand-holding, kisses, and other gestures of affection that everyone understands. Photo by Timothy Norris.

Since May of this year, the Los Angeles art collaborative Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young) has been in residence creating Fallen Fruit of the Skirball, a multi-phase exhibition exploring the meanings of love and commitment. For the central part of this project, the public was invited to submit photographs of themselves with someone they love. A selection of these would then be displayed salon-style over the custom-designed pomegranate wallpaper covering the walls of the Skirball’s Ruby Gallery. People from Los Angeles and beyond, including several from our own Skirball community, responded to this call for participation.

With the proliferation of smartphones, with which we can take and post snapshots and selfies on social media at any time, we are able to capture moments with loved ones and express ourselves more easily than ever before. But there are also photographs from old family albums and archives, studio shots and wallet-sized prints. Fallen Fruit embraced all kinds of portraiture to explore complex expressions of love—friendships, marriage, familial ties, and nuanced social messages. They carefully sorted the submissions and chose images to construct a collective portrait of a lifetime, from birth and adolescence through adulthood and old age.

Once the portraits started pouring in, so did the amazing stories behind them. The images portray weddings, both recent and long ago; couples celebrating anniversaries; grandparents sharing special moments with their grandchildren; mothers holding newborn babies; a young dad napping with his toddler children; and a gay couple getting married on the day the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was overturned. Continue reading →

In conjunction with the “commitment document” to be created and installed as part of the public participatory art commission Fallen Fruit of the Skirball, the artists invite you to submit photographs of people who love each other or you with someone you love. A selection of these photographs will be chosen by the artists and specially framed for display in the exhibition. Read on for submission instructions and guidelines. For inspiration, the above photograph is from the Skirball collection: Wedding Anniversary Invitation for Gittel and Irving Weinrot. Gift of Bertha Hochberg, SCC13.3.

When bright red pomegranates started filling every nook and cranny of wall space in the Ruby Gallery at the Skirball, I witnessed people stop in their tracks, puzzle over it, and smile. After working closely with the Los Angeles art collaborative Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young) on this immersive art installation, I have learned how something as simple as a piece of fruit can bring so many people and ideas together.

In their artistic practice, Fallen Fruit uses fruit as a filter to explore social engagement and relies on acts of sharing, public participation, and community involvement to make their work. The social, economic, and political implications of fruit reveal the relationship between those who have food resources and those who do not, and yet they also foster a sense of community and activism. In fact, Fallen Fruit’s name is derived from a passage in the book of Leviticus:

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.

This philosophy of giving and reaching out to strangers has allowed Fallen Fruit to collaborate with communities and institutions all over the world. After studying our collection of Jewish cultural artifacts, Fallen Fruit found inspiration in a seventeenth-century ketubbah (marriage contract). They also discovered how prominently the pomegranate figures in Jewish art and culture, particularly as a symbol of fertility and marriage. The installation in the Ruby Gallery combines their interest in both the cultural ritual of marriage and the beauty of the pomegranate by featuring specially designed wallpaper created from photographs of pomegranate fruits grown in Southern California.

Details of the wallpaper designed by Fallen Fruit for their collaboration with the Skirball. It features pomegranates in all different forms—cracked open, discolored, seeds and juice scattered everywhere. These imperfections add even more beauty and dimension to the wallpaper and compel us to look closer and find something new each time.

Fallen Fruit’s custom fruit wallpaper has become their signature visual format for exploring fruits that are important or symbolic to certain institutions and collections. But why wallpaper? Austin Young explains, “Fruit is often decorative. It appears in wallpaper, art objects, patterns on textiles, decorative art, and still life paintings throughout history in different cultures.” The wallpaper that Fallen Fruit creates often incorporates a lattice-like pattern that repeats continuously. Austin adds that this repetition reinforces the fact that “we see fruit as a common denominator and connector.”

After putting together the design of pomegranates taken from photographs of the fruit grown around Southern California, Fallen Fruit worked with a printer to get the repeating pattern printed on self-adhesive vinyl wallpaper. When installed, this wallpaper will be seamless.

The pomegranate wallpaper that Fallen Fruit designed has been made into a special edition just for the Skirball. In Jewish tradition, the pomegranate is a pervasive symbol from biblical times relating to the garments of the priesthood and royalty, the architecture of the ancient temple, and Torah ornaments of the synagogue. According to one rabbinic tradition, a pomegranate contains 613 seeds, corresponding directly to divine commandments in the Torah.

The installers make sure the wallpaper looks perfect. The round window looking into Zeidler’s Café was an especially tricky area of the installation.

Views of the completed installation. The Ruby Gallery is entirely transformed by the wallpaper.

Several months ago, the Los Angeles art collaborative Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young) began an artist residency at the Skirball to develop an installation for our Ruby Gallery. Fallen Fruit’s community-based projects use fruit as a medium to explore social engagement, so we invited them to search our collection of Jewish artifacts for anything fruit related! After surveying a range of fine art and ritual objects featuring figs, etrogs, apples, oranges, and many other fruits, they could not take their eyes off of a seventeenth-century ketubbah that was richly decorated with fruit and animal motifs, zodiac signs, and biblical scenes.

In Hebrew ketubbah (plural, ketubbot) literally means “what is written.” It is the term used for a marriage contract, a custom that originated in biblical times. In an era when women were regarded as property rather than as equals, its purpose was to protect the married woman in the event that she was divorced or widowed. It specified that she must receive a material sum, including the dowry she brought to the marriage, to assure her support and well-being. Over the centuries the ketubbah has evolved in many Jewish communities from a legal document to a symbolic expression of mutual love and respect between equal partners. Today, particularly in the United States, many couples compose their own ketubbah texts and personalize the design.

The Skirball has one of the most prominent collections of ketubbot in the world, with over 430 in the collection from countries such as Italy, Egypt, Persia, Germany, and the United States. A majority of the collection belongs to the special tradition, developed in Jewish art, of the decorated marriage contract. After the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, the custom of illuminated ketubbot flourished in areas of Sephardi settlement such as Italy, Amsterdam, London, North Africa, and the Near East. Nearly half of the entire Skirball collection consists of ketubbot produced in Italy during the golden age of the illuminated ketubbah, from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.

The particular ketubbah that inspired Fallen Fruit’s project is from Busseto, Italy. The traditional Hebrew text was copied by the scribe in 1677, and this text was set in its beautifully crafted frame about a century later. The frame includes an inner border constructed with an intricate die-cut technique. The contract is signed by two rabbis from the Busseto community to sanction the marriage of the bridegroom, Jacob, son of Eliezer Mogil, and the bride, Dolce, daughter of the late Isaac Navarra, on March 5, 1677. Made out of parchment (animal skin), the ketubbah features five biblical episodes and twelve signs of the zodiac set in roundels. Continue reading →

Winter is a great season to spend a cozy afternoon experiencing any one of the amazing museums L.A. has to offer, including the Skirball! We asked our curators to recommend some of their favorite exhibitions currently on display around town. Doris Berger and Linde Lehtinen, who are busy curating the upcoming Skirball exhibition Light and Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950, took some time to check out a few fascinating film and photography exhibitions. Check back tomorrow for recommendations from Erin Clancey and Erin Curtis!

Zoom into a Film Shack

The French filmmaker Agnès Varda (b. 1928) is a hero of mine. Many years ago, her films opened my eyes to the fact that it is possible to be personal, political, and playful all at once. Varda has been making films in that vein since the 1960s, reaching a diverse audience with narrative and documentary films alike.

The movie industry has changed a lot in the past decades, as have museums, and the worlds seem to be blending together. Varda’s more recent visibility pays tribute to that; her place is not only in cinema anymore. Agnès Varda in Californialand, a small exhibition currently at LACMA through June 22, 2014, showcases films that Varda made in California when she spent time here with her family in 1967–69 and 1980–81. One of the highlights of the exhibition, which features a sculptural installation and a selection of her photographs, is a film shack containing thousands of images from the shooting of Varda’s 1969 film LIONS LOVE (… AND LIES). Continue reading →